Chance
If the word chance exists, its meaning is in effect the same
as that of the word order. It can be demonstrated that
chance obeys a certain order, that is the order of order,
that order is due to chance, that this is so by chance, etc...
'Automatic' writing naïvely encourages this banal
pretension to devise a methodical way of 'forcing thought
to speak' – as if thought were a machine, as if the
interesting quality in writing or painting weren’t
always unpredictable.
Letter from René Magritte to André Bosmans,
January 13, 1959
The theories about progress and the 'genius which always
pierces through', arise from the fact that it is intolerable
to suppose that what is most precious in the world should
be given over to chance. It is because it is intolerable that
it ought to be contemplated. Creation is this very thing.
[...]
Simone Weil on chance in Gravity and Grace, 1947
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